The Confidence Not to Die
"Kid! Run! Hurry!"
Socrates waved me on.
He was pulling away. How was he even running? Ah. He'd cut the rope at his neck. The one at mine...
What? Mine had been cut a long while ago. I'd been slashing at empty air.
Ngh.
I tried to get up and lost my balance. My head pounded—the blow from earlier, most likely. Back of the skull, somewhere around here. A bludgeon, I thought. I touched it, and my fingers came away wet. Not sweat.
Blood.
The lightest touch, and my hand was slick with it. No wonder the world was spinning. Walking a straight line was hard enough. Running was out of the question.
The Old Man used to say that if you meant to live in the outside world, you needed eyes on every side of your head. Stay tense at all times, he told me.
I had won fight after fight against raiders. Ambushed whole bands of them, and won. Put down an assassin, too. Maybe that was why I'd grown so sure of myself. In a shop along one side of the settlement, and again in the middle of the chaos, I'd been taken down like a fool.
Still a long way to go.
My head swam, and I went down.
"Kid! Hey!"
I hadn't meant to collapse.
"Damn it!"
Socrates wasn't the only piece of merchandise who had managed to run. No. Not quite. They were dropping one after another as bullets snapped toward them. My vision blurred. Had Socrates gone down too? I couldn't tell.
The boss looked over the scene and sighed.
"You killed an awful lot of them."
"W-well... you said if things got difficult, we could kill them all..."
"Did I say I had a problem with it?"
"I-I'm sorry."
The trouble was that the boss's idea of if things got difficult was nothing like his men's.
"Seems to me I said the same thing yesterday."
"Sir?"
"That you'd killed an awful lot of them."
"Ah. Yes..."
"What was it I told you yesterday?"
"That if we were confident we wouldn't die, we should avoid bloodshed where we could..."
The result, all the same, was a bloodbath. His men had killed every last one of them.
"B-but it was a fight we couldn't survive without killing! Taking them without killing them was—!"
"Did I say I had a problem with it?"
"I'm sorry..."
And so the Gwanghwamun gang spilled blood wherever they passed.
A familiar jolt. The cart.
When I came to, I was on it again. I opened my eyes to pitch dark, something resting against my eyebrows. My legs were bound once more. It felt as if I'd slipped back a few hours, but that couldn't be. I rubbed the back of my head against the boards, and a sickening pain flared. Caught again. Being hauled off.
"Boss! The road's blocked!"
The cart lurched.
"What are you talking about?"
"The army's got the intersection locked down!"
"Locked down?"
"Seems a monster swarm is scheduled to pass through?"
"If it's passing through, it passes through. What's this about a schedule?"
"Just that they heard word it was going to pass, so—"
"Bring me the field commander."
"Sir...?"
"Now."
Maybe it was the blow to the head. I seemed to be hearing nonsense.
"I am the field commander."
"Your rank... a lieutenant, is it?"
"It is. So you're that woman boss of Gwanghwamun? Arrogant doesn't begin to cover it. A neighborhood thug, daring to order an officer of the national army to come and go?"
"And yet you came along meekly enough."
"I came because I was curious about that famous face of yours."
So it hadn't been nonsense. The Gwanghwamun gang. Not ordinary raiders, then.
"I heard you were controlling the intersection."
"A monster swarm is scheduled to pass. Detour by the other road."
"The monsters won't be here for ages. We both know that."
"That's government work for you. If you want no accidents, you move early. Only slapdash outfits like yours bother showing up right on time."
"Government work? All this time, we've—"
A sharp beep cut him off.
"Quiet. Radio from headquarters."
Another beep.
"Yes, I'm on site now. Yes, the monsters haven't—"
"This is Yoran of Gwanghwamun. Do you hear me? Who am I speaking—"
"This crazy woman! I'm sorry! No, she's right— Yes?"
"Hand the radio to the woman."
"...Understood."
My head was starting to clear. Nobody watching the cart, by the look of it. I forced myself upright.
Counting me, only three pieces of merchandise were left tied inside, and this was the only cart. The rest had either run or died. The couriers who had stayed with us the whole way were gone. They must have handed us over to the Gwanghwamun gang and finished the job.
Dozens of unfamiliar fighters stood around the cart. Gwanghwamun's people, no doubt. Ahead of us were soldiers, and facing them, a woman. A sniper rifle rode on her back. The sniper I'd seen earlier. She looked about ten years older than me.
"This is Yoran of Gwanghwamun."
Her hair was wound high. I'd thought it was a hairpin. Looking closer, it seemed to be a rifle part—something like a gas piston.
"Ah. It's been a while. Have you been well?"
So that woman was the Gwanghwamun gang's lady boss.
"Yes. This month's tax, a week early. Understood."
I could make a fair guess at the gang's standing. It felt very much as if I'd fallen into the hands of a thoroughly troublesome person.
"The lieutenant here seems a little short on flexibility, you see. Yes."
Whoever was on the other end of that radio was a man you could talk to.
The call ended on that note of warm affection.
"One order for me, and one for you, Lieutenant. One apiece."
"......"
"Mine was to apologize. He said that you are, after all, an officer of the Republic of Korea Army, and hardly someone a mere gang boss ought to address so freely. So I'll apologize. I'll be more careful next time."
"...And the order for me?"
"To open the road for us. Flexibly, mind you."
"...Understood."
The road opened.
I sat with my back straight, and nobody paid me any mind. The one they called Boss glanced my way.
"Hm."
No particular reaction. He looked away again.
The cart jolted to a stop before a ruined building. Sentries stood watch. A hideout, by the look of it. A few of the men went inside.
"So we've ended up in Gwanghwamun..."
Another piece of merchandise, bound beside me. He'd been lying so still I'd thought he was dead. Alive after all.
"What do you mean?"
"This is Gwanghwamun."
The real Gwanghwamun was long gone. These days the name belonged to a hideout.
"Tsk. Dead men, then. Wonder if the rest made it back alive."
"I think I saw them get shot while they were running."
"So did I. Still looked like one or two of them made it all the way, though."
I wondered what had become of Socrates.
"Well, well. Only three pieces of merchandise left?"
The ones who hadn't gone into the hideout came over.
"Time you earned your keep!"
So much for escaping.
It was the same as before. Legs freed enough to walk. Upper body still bound. And all three of us linked at the neck by a rope, with me in the middle.
The boss stood in front of me.
"Hm."
Arms crossed, he looked down at me. His face gave nothing away. I couldn't read him at all.
"We didn't bring back the wrong one, did we?"
"Sir?"
"Doesn't look a thing like the kid from the rumors."
"Ah, they say everyone thinks that once they see him in person."
"Hm... I'll have to make sure it's really him."
"How, sir?"
The boss bent at the waist and brought his face close. He smelled of gunpowder.
"You don't look away."
"Should I?"
"Bold little brat. Are you the one from the rumors?"
"Which rumors?"
"The kid who beats down every raider that comes at him and never spills a drop of blood. And yet, for some reason, the kid who put a knife in one of my men."
"Boss, you think he'll admit to that? Admit it and he's a dead man—"
"That's me."
The right corner of the boss's mouth climbed.
"Funny kid. Then let me ask. Why?"
"Because your man was the only one who shot at me."
"Hm?"
"Nobody else had ever shot at me. You can actually die if you get shot."
"So the reason you never drew blood before was that you were confident you wouldn't die?"
"Yeah."
"What am I even..."
Something in his eyes shifted, again and again, in the space of a moment.
"...So the kid from the rumors was more than the rumors."
I couldn't begin to tell what he was thinking.
"Boss, you believe him?"
"You said it yourself a moment ago. Admit it and he's a dead man, so there's no way he would. And yet this kid admitted it."
"Which makes him even less trustworthy! He's out of his mind!"
"Ironclad logic. Well. Watch him long enough and we'll know. Bring him."
Bring me. Where?
"Then lead them out. I'll follow."
"Yes, Boss. You heard him! Everyone, move!"
I'd thought they would drag us into the hideout. They didn't. Only some of the men went back inside. The boss, and most of the force, stayed where they were.
"Everyone, pick up the pace!"
Every one of them was loaded down with bundles. Where were they going?
"Boss, it's time."
"Already? We'll rest a moment, then go."
It was open ground. Not a thought of cover. They all simply dropped where they were and sat. The mystery of all that luggage solved itself at once. Every bit of it was food.
On the move, you packed food dense in calories for its bulk. Their menu showed no such consideration at all.
Those gluttons in the Gwanghwamun gang...
So that was what they'd meant.
"You three."
The boss came over with his arms full of food.
"When was your last meal?"
I couldn't even remember.
"Boss, why are you looking after them too?"
"There ought to be at least enough fairness in it to top off their fuel."
Fairness.
"Eat."
He tossed us a few pieces of meat. Roasted, still on the bone. The rope at our wrists stayed as it was, but they undid the one that had pinned our arms tight against our waists. With both hands moving together, I could more or less pick the meat up. Maybe to keep the three of us from talking, they loosened the neck ropes for the meal and spaced us apart. The boss himself took the job of watching me.
"Light eater, aren't you."
I'd taken all of two bites, and that was enough for him to speak.
"Not to your taste?"
Hardly. It was far better than anything I'd eaten at the cabin. But—
"I've got a feeling I'm going to need my body soon."
All that talk of fuel and fairness.
"Didn't think being too full would help."
"Sharp kid, I'll give you that. Who taught you? Your upbringing? Or did you have a master of your own?"
"My brother and sister."
"That's upbringing too."
The man they called Boss was not what I had expected.
"Weren't you after revenge on me?"
"Someone else will see to that. Not me."
Ah. So that was it.
"Afraid?"
"Not particularly."
"No? Well. We'll see about that, too."
Out on the open ground they were working through a proper feast, as if fortune had always favored them. A strange sight.
"Isn't this a little too conspicuous?"
A soft breath of laughter escaped him. What was so funny?
"We live for this moment. Does it matter if we're seen?"
"This moment?"
The boss picked up the meat I'd left.
"Nobody around here dares lay a hand on us. Well—not nobody. Now and then you get fearless idiots like Dongdaemun, eyeing our place. The army's got our back."
As if it were nothing, he bit into the very spot I'd been chewing.
"All of it just so we can eat and live, wouldn't you say?"
He tapped me.
"Huh?"
"Why aren't you answering?"
"Was I supposed to?"
"Too hard a talk for a little one?"
Of course eating and staying alive was the first worry. The reason I'd taken to robbing raiders—something that had never even crossed my mind back at the cabin—came down to exactly that.
"Eating what you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, without a glance spared for anyone else. How many people in this world do you think get to live like that?"
I looked at them again. This time, not at the open ground spread dangerously at their backs, but at their faces. Every one of them was smiling.
"Right now, in this moment, we are confident we won't die. Kid, we'll soon see whether you've got the skill to match that confidence—"
The boss rose and set a hand on my shoulder.
"What!?"
He snatched it back, startled.
"...Kid."
He worked his fingers as if he'd touched something hot.
"...You've got a Core ability?"
Mealtime was over.